“Nothing ever measures up to what I expect, nothing.”

The American architect Paul Rudolph sought to integrate into modern architecture a spatial drama, a concern for urbanism, and an individuality.The son of a Methodist minister, Paul Marvin Rudolph was born on October 28, 1918, in Elkton, Kentucky. He attended the architecture school at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn, and after graduating in 1940 he entered the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied under Walter Gropius, the former head of the Bauhaus in Germany. After receiving his master’s degree from Harvard in 1947, he spent the next year traveling in Europe (on a Wheelwright Scholarship), where he began to develop a strong interest in urban design, a subject which he felt had been neglected in his education under Gropius.(wiki)

``Architecture is a personal effort, and the fewer people coming between you and your work - the better.``

“I want to put homes in the sky,” said Rudolph of the ill-fated project. “Psychologically, it makes a great deal of difference for people living closely together in cities.” (b. Elkton, Kentucky 1918; d. 1997)

Rudolph has displayed an interest in the problems of urban design and completed a succession of unexecuted projects. Preoccupied with the notion of an industrialized “plug-in” city, he has devised schemes in which mobile residence pods are plugged into a steel frame which connects to mechanical and electrical services.Rudolph’s work exhibits a highly personal and uncompromising style. Although his works qualify as part of the Modern Movement, he has questioned the validity of the movement’s precepts in his later works. (Encyclopedia of World Biography)

``First delight, then instruct.``

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (13 March 1781 – 9 October 1841) was a Prussian architect, city planner, and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schinkel was one of the most prominent architects of Germany and designed both neoclassical and neogothic buildings. Schinkel’s style, in his most productive period, is defined by a turn to Greek rather than Imperial Roman architecture, an attempt to turn away from the style that was linked to the recent French occupiers. (Thus, he is a noted proponent of the Greek Revival.) His most famous extant buildings are found in and around Berlin. (wiki)

``use the best possible materials and reveal the qualities of those materials and the craftmanship of their assembly.``

Later, Schinkel moved away from classicism altogether, embracing the Neo-Gothic in his Friedrichswerder Church (1824–1831). Schinkel’s Bauakademie (1832–1836), his most innovative building, eschewed historicist conventions and seemed to point the way to a clean-lined “modernist” architecture that would become prominent in Germany only toward the beginning of the 20th century. (wiki)

“You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.”

“It was well known that Wright visualized the building in its entirety before he or his draughtsmen even put a line on paper. Wright’s perspective drawings were often begun using mechanical projection, which meant the building’s plan is place at the bottom at an oblique angle corresponding to the angle the perspective will be drawn. Next, a horizon line with vanishing points is established above the plan. Then vertical lines are drawn at the plan’s intersections, carried upward, establish the building’s corners. In this way, the renderer does not exaggerate the true proportions of the building, leading to a clarity not present in most typical architectural drawings.” (Read more on BeLoose)

“Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary explores the fundamental role of drawing in the work of Greek avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001). A leading figure in twentieth century music, Xenakis was trained as a civil engineer, then became an architect and developed revolutionary designs while working with Le Corbusier. Comprised of nearly 100 documents created between 1953 and 1984, this is the first North American exhibition dedicated to Xenakis’s original works on paper. Included are rarely-seen hand-rendered scores, architectural drawings, conceptual renderings, pre-compositional sketches, and graphic scores.” (See the Drawing Center’s exhibition catalogue: Drawing Papers 88: Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary)

(Up:) Mycenae alpha, for UPIC [I.Xenakis 1978] 09:54 | Iannis Xenakis created the music using the UPIC which makes sound based on the drawings that he made. (Image from Musica Informatica)

The text and images on this page are not authored by Lines & Marks. They are shared under “fair use” for educational and reference purposes and are subject to copyright.